Karen Bakker is a Canadian author, researcher, and entrepreneur known for her work on digital transformation, environmental governance, and sustainability. A Rhodes Scholar with a PhD from Oxford University, she is a Professor at the University of British Columbia. She is currently the Matina S. Horner Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stanford University’s Annenberg Fellowship in Communication, Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40″, and a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.

Bakker’s Smart Earth project focuses on digital transformation and environmental governance, advancing regenerative sustainability and environmental justice through mobilizing the tools of the Digital Age to address the most pressing challenges of the Anthropocene.

Bakker is the author of the widely celebrated The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, which won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award (2022), has been translated into seven languages, and featured in a TED talk in 2023.